Not Less Than Gods (30 page)

“Here you are, poor chap!” Bell-Fairfax fell to his knees and, opening the case, withdrew the earpieces and put them on Hobson’s head, for Hobson’s hat had come off in his dramatic demonstration. He reached back and turned a switch on the transmitter. Hobson went limp at once, with his tongue lolling out and an expression of beatific peace on his vacant features.

“You see?” Bell-Fairfax stood up, looking into the customs official’s face. “He must have his machine. You really cannot take it from him. You understand that now, I’m sure.”

Stemme translated. The Russian, staring back at Bell-Fairfax, blinked and frowned. “Is this going to work when he doesn’t understand what you’re saying?” said Ludbridge under his breath.

“I sincerely hope so,” said Bell-Fairfax, smiling at the Russian, who said something back to Stemme.

“He says you should not take such an invalid traveling,” said Stemme. Bell-Fairfax held out his hands, palms up.

“Yes, very true, but our poor friend does so want to see the magnificent city of St. Petersburg before he dies! It has long been his dearest wish, for London has nothing to compare with it.”

The Russian grunted. He pulled his gaze away from Bell-Fairfax
and, stepping back, prodded the transmitter with his foot. He said something.

“He says to close it up. He must seal all your luggage,” said Stemme.

This, apparently, meant that they were cleared for going ashore. The pilot guided them through brackish channels and the tidal mudflats of the Neva, leaving the Gulf of Finland behind them. Low islands were passed, to port and starboard, and then abruptly the geometry of a modern city was around them on all sides, as they moored before the customs house on the battery point known as the Strelka.

Here they disembarked and were obliged to go through inspection again. Stemme and the
Orn
’s steersman bid them a pleasant farewell, having no business with the officials other than to certify that they were dropping off chartered passengers and were bound back to Denmark.

“But you will not have to wait long before your contact arrives,” said Stemme in a low voice, shaking Ludbridge’s hand as they emerged from the customs office. “Safe journeys, my friend. And enjoy your time in St. Petersburg! It may be a city built on the dead, but it is rationally and geometrically built on the dead.”

“What did that mean?” inquired Bell-Fairfax, as they watched the
Orn
backing and filling, preparatory to putting out to sea again.

“No idea,” said Ludbridge.

“Can we hire a porter?” said Pengrove, sitting down on his trunk.

“No idea,” said Ludbridge, looking around. “Here, you!
Parlez-vous Français?
”

This produced a notable lack of response in those working along the waterfront, though one or two persons gave Ludbridge rather a cold look and continued on their way.

“Hallo! Don’t suppose any of you lot know where a man might purchase cigars?” Ludbridge bellowed.

“I think this chap knows,” observed Hobson, pointing to a Russian who was approaching them with an agitated air. He was stout and bespectacled, round and red of face.

“What becomes of illusions?” he said in English, addressing Ludbridge.

“We dispel them.”

“And we are everywhere. You would be Mr. Ludbridge? Cyril Borisovich Nikitin, at your service.”

“How d’you do?” Ludbridge shook his hand. “My associates: Mr. Hobson, Mr. Pengrove, Mr. Bell-Fairfax.”

Nikitin shook hands with them, though when he came to Bell-Fairfax he had to crane his neck back to look up at him. “My God! What are you, Peter the Great? That’s a compliment! He was our greatest success.”

“I’m afraid he is rather tall, yes,” said Ludbridge. “We’re all very pleased to meet you. Might we arrange for a porter or two?”

“Immediately,” said Nikitin, and after a moment’s impassioned harangue had convinced a porter to load their trunks onto a cart and follow them along the waterfront to a great building on the other side of the Strelka, facing out across another branch of the Neva. Here the porter was paid off and the baggage unloaded; Nikitin bid them wait a moment and ran inside for another handcart.

While he was gone they stared around. The vast edifice before which they stood and the equally impressive edifices across the river were all of a pastel wedding-cake prettiness, beautiful examples of Enlightenment architecture. Only here and there, where a gilded dome rose against the skyline, were they reminded that this was Rus sia. The whole effect was of lightness, spaciousness, mathematical and geometric perfection.

“Here we go,” said Nikitin breathlessly, emerging with the cart. “Load these on and we’ll go into my office. I have an elevating room that will take us down to the headquarters. This is the museum. Welcome to the Kabinet of Wonders in the Kunstkamera! Clever, yes?”

“Not entirely by chance, I imagine?”

“No, of course not, though it was harder than you’d think—His Royal Highness came to distrust us at the end, such a pity, but by that time he didn’t really trust anybody. But what can one do? A czar is a czar. That was Peter the Great, young man, and I hope you won’t take offense—he too was extraordinarily tall, just about your height.”

“None taken, sir,” said Edward, but a little stiffly nonetheless.

Nikitin led them in and through a maze of corridors to a small office. “Here we are . . . please excuse the untidiness, won’t you? My dear young giant, will you be so kind as to reach up and push on that bit of crown molding? Yes! How wonderful! I always need to climb to the very top of the stepladder, myself. And . . . there.”

A section of wall panel slid open and revealed the ascending room beyond. They followed Nikitin inside and the compartment promptly dropped with them, a smooth descent to an unknown depth.

“This is an exceptionally beautiful city,” said Pengrove.

“Thank you! It’s the very antithesis of a medieval warren of hovels, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I wonder if you might explain something—I hope you won’t take offense—it’s simply that Mr. Stemme said something a bit puzzling—”

“Stemme? Yes, good man, Stemme. What remark was that?”

“He said this was a city built on the dead.”

“And so it is.” Nikitin turned and gave them a somber look. The room slid to a stop and the door opened; they stepped out into a brick-lined corridor, clean and dry, lit by vacuum lamps, but with an unmistakable smell of dankness somewhere.

“Our czar who built this city, Peter the Great, won this land from Sweden but it was nothing, a swamp, a muddy mess with only the advantage that it opened on the sea. He loved the sea, that man. And our people, which is to say the Kabinet of Wonders, had tutored him to love the modern world too. We made certain that the young boy traveled to other lands and saw how accomplished, how civilized and progressive, other countries were. He went home and, as we had meant him to do, set about dragging Old Rus sia out of the medieval darkness. He did many excellent things for his country, our young man. But he ruled like a medieval despot, because that was the only way any czar had ever ruled.

“This city, yes, is as beautiful as a dream. He brought in splendid minds from the finest courts of the West to design it. Then he brought in serfs, ragged and beaten slaves, and worked them to death raising its
foundations from the water. It was hard to build solid land, in all these mudflats. Hard to get enough stones. The serfs died in their thousands and when they did, their bodies were thrown into the excavations, shoring up the walls.

“Come, I’ll show you something.” He sidestepped into a small passageway and brought them to an alcove. It opened on a dark room, and as they entered they had the impression the place was a chapel. Banks of flickering candles lit it. Before them were six tombs of dark red granite, innocent of any names or dates. On the wall above each one was a life-sized painting on a wooden panel, like an icon. Each depicted a man in scarlet robes, richly trimmed and ornamented in gold leaf. But there were no Cyrillic letters spelling out names or titles, nor were the figures staring forward like saints, nor were their hands raised to bless.

Instead, each man held in his slack hand a tool of some kind, chisel or shovel or mattock. Each man’s face was individual, distinct, yet all were gray, lined and exhausted looking, and all had their eyes shut as though they slept.

“Portraits of the dead. We found them when we were digging here, hiding away our headquarters under the museum.” Nikitin spoke softly. “They were perfectly preserved; they’d been thrown into anaerobic mud, so deep and so cold they never rotted. We autopsied them, we studied them, we made careful drawings of them, we learned all we could from each dead man, but of course not his name. All we could do for them was give them new burials here, with as much honor and ceremony as we could provide. And they are only six, out of the thousands we know must lie all around us.

“They are martyrs, after all, to the future we wanted to bring to Russia. We think it is good to have them here, to remind us of the human cost of our plans. Remember them, when you walk the streets in the sunlight above.”

They went on past other alcoves, but here living men worked or sat in quiet discussion. All in all it was not very different from Downstairs at
Redking’s. In a great vaulted room with a roaring fire at one end, Nikitin poured out vodka for them.

“To your very good health,” said Ludbridge, raising his glass.

“To the great day,” said Nikitin, and they drank. “Ah. We have arranged rooms at a private house for you, on Anglisky Avenue just across the river. We have a private tunnel that connects to it, very useful; no one will see you arrive. This is good, since the Third Section has been more than usually intrusive lately. Not that they are likely to interfere with you much, but it never hurts to obscure one’s tracks a little, whoever one may be.”

“What’s the Third Section?” asked Hobson.

“Our secret police,” replied Nikitin. He shook his head and poured himself another shot of vodka. Hobson held out his glass and Nikitin obliged with a refill. “The present czar was not one of our students, you see. We tutored his older brother, Alexander; same story as with Peter the Great. We laid the proper foundation but the instincts of a despot won out in the end . . . and then our man ran off and became a monk and we had little Nicholas Pavlovitch to deal with. Look how long it has taken us to get a single railway in this country!”

“I gather the present fellow is difficult to control?”

“Completely uncontrollable. A fine old reactionary throwback, ruling with an iron fist. Instituted the Third Section. Imagines himself the policeman of Europe, determined to suppress every liberal revolution anywhere.

“Of course we had men in place tutoring the Czarevich, and the man promises well, nothing like his father. But, really, sometimes we feel like a bunch of Sisyphuses down here! We roll the rock of state uphill, and every time we make a little progress the rock slips and goes rolling backward into the Dark Ages.”

“Ah! But that’s the very reason we’ve come,” said Ludbridge. “We’re bringing you a block and tackle, so to speak. You have an Aetheric Transmitter and Receiver set, I believe?”

“We have one, yes. There’s a listening post on Zayachy Island.”

“Jolly good.” Ludbridge rose and went to his trunk. Opening one of
the secret compartments, he drew forth a pair of boxes. One was small, perhaps a bit bigger than a deck of playing cards. The other was about the size of a cigar box.

“Now, just regard these.” Ludbridge sat down at the table and passed the smaller box to Nikitin. It was plain unpainted wood, with a label printed in Russian.

“Shirt studs?” Wonderingly, Nikitin opened the box and spilled a few out on the table.

“They appear to be, yes. However! Our chaps in Fabrication simply excel in making fully functioning miniatures. Concealed within each of these studs is a transmitter. Wear one of these and your man at his post will be able to hear every word that passes your lips, if he’s tuned to the proper frequency. It only remains for you to place a new valet with the Czar. Can that be arranged?”

“We ought to be able to do that much, yes.”

“And then, you see, though your czar may be as unmanageable as ever, you will at least have the advantage of being privy to all of his plans. We have found this sort of thing to be profoundly useful, with our prime ministers.”

“Wonderful!” Nikitin picked up one of the studs and peered at it closely.

“But here are more toys,” said Ludbridge, pushing the larger box forward. It was covered in velvet and fastened with a brass clasp. “What d’you suppose these are, eh?”

“I can’t guess.”

Ludbridge opened the box with a flourish. “Spectacles. Each one an exact copy of the pair worn by Count Nesselrode. He’s your czar’s chancellor and foreign minister, yes? Wouldn’t it be useful to have advance warning of every move he makes? And there are transistors built into the nosepieces, here, to make certain you do. Get a man in there to substitute one for the count’s present pair. Also useful as a costume accessory for one of your politicals, if he finds himself in a position to listen in to secrets, because everything he hears while wearing them will
be instantaneously transmitted back to your receiver. Mind you, you’ll need to expand your listening post by some five or six fellows.”

“We can do that, yes,” said Nikitin in delight. He picked up a pair of the spectacles and tried them on. “Who would believe it! Look out, Karl Vasilyevich.”

“And Hobson here can train your new men on the receivers,” said Ludbridge. “Nor is this all. Would you like permanent transmitters installed in places, as opposed to hidden on people? Council rooms, for example? Audience chambers? We can arrange them.”

“I am dazzled at your munificence,” said Nikitin. He looked thoughtfully at Ludbridge. “This is an attempt to prevent the coming war, is it not?”

“Well, we very much hope to be able to lessen the catastrophe, if not prevent it altogether.”

“And you think we will be able to do that, with these gifts? My friend, we will try, but there is a limit to what’s possible. At least until our Alexander Nicolaevich comes to power.”